 Welcome to a fresh new episode of Start It Up and Entrepreneur. In the times of gig economy, we millennials are looking at different kind of careers. It need not be one career throughout our lifetime. We might be a coder in a week and might become a chef over the weekend. Today we are going to talk about new kind of freelance services which have opened up a new kind of business option for various entrepreneurs. You might be good at offering various kinds of consultancy services. You might want to offer some kind of legal services. You might want to offer taxation services or accounting services to anyone. That's where somebody can look at your repertoire of work and reach out to you in case they are looking at working with you. Having a freelance business is less about investment and more about the skills which you possess. You need to own your skills which could be about writing, which could be about consultancy, which could be about managing an event and further see how to scale it up. In case you are offering photography services, it might need your investment in terms of camera and other equipments related to it. And in terms of writing, you might want to invest in getting yourself a crash course in creative writing or others. Initially you can build a portfolio of work and send it to your target audience to see what kind of services you can offer to them and what do you stand for. If they find it interesting, they will reach out to you and offer you more services. Once they have owned your skills, it's time to reach out to the world and let them know that you are available for business. Platforms like LinkedIn offer open for business services wherein you can tell the world that you can offer these services. In the time of social media, the best platform for you would be an Instagram account wherein you could showcase the pictures of any event you would have hosted last night or maybe your comic jig that you did at a corporate event last Saturday. Before you get into this business on a full-fledged basis, you need to do enough research about the kind of clients you can target in this sector. First would be to target customers in your local area where in case you are offering an event-based services, you can see what could be your potential clients or companies you could reach out to. You can start writing to them or maybe doing some cold calls and sending them a repertoire of your work so that they can see and then come back to you in terms of the services they would need. Once you have zeroed in on a client, it's time to negotiate the cost with them. In a freelance basis, you have to negotiate with them on a purpose-based basis. Understand from the market what could be the cost for each freelance project. In writing, it might be per page, per words or per article you do writing for them. In an even management business, costs get attached in terms of the kind of services you would keep on adding to an event and what kind of hours you need to put in on that project. The only down turn in a freelance business is that you have to dig the well each and every day. There would be lesser cases of somebody coming back to you with their work but yes, word of mouth publicity can work in your advantage. One important aspect to be kept in mind is to sign a contract with your company when you are offering them freelance services so that it doesn't backfire. So what are the challenges in this business? One is about being paid on time and second is about having the regular flow of work which might not be the case. So freelance business most of all look like a seasonal business in case somebody is offering photography services in the wedding season it might be on the top but in rest of the time it might not be available. So it's good to keep it as one of the options for you rather than just leaving your full-fledged job. That's all for today. Let's start it up. Look forward to more ideas on www.entrepreneur.com for more videos.